The present disclosure relates to yarn tubes or cores upon which yarns are wound to form yarn packages.
In the production of yarn it is frequently necessary to wind a yarn about a yarn tube to form a yarn package that can then be transported to another piece of equipment or another location at which the yarn is then unwound from the yarn package and processed in some manner. In certain segments of the yarn manufacturing industry it has been the conventional practice to use metal yarn tubes. A metal yarn tube is configured to be mounted on a drive spindle assembly that rotates the yarn tube for winding yarn onto the yarn tube to form a yarn package, or for paying yarn out from a yarn package already wound on the yarn tube.
A typical spindle assembly includes a hub that is rotatably driven by a motor and drive arrangement so as to rotate about a rotational axis, and an elongate spindle rigidly affixed to the hub and coaxial therewith. The spindle has a length that is about three-quarters or more of the length of the standard metal yarn tube. Thus, the spindle is designed to extend up within the interior of the metal yarn tube and engage a fitting disposed within the yarn tube closer to the distal end than to the proximal end of the tube, so that the yarn tube is radially centered with respect to the spindle assembly both at its proximal end that engages the hub and at a location proximate the distal end.
At one time the typical practice was to use such metal yarn tubes wholly within a single facility, and this enabled the relatively costly metal yarn tubes to be recycled for use many times, with relative ease because of the short distances the tubes had to be transported between different processes at different locations within the same facility. More recently, however, the industry has changed such that it is often necessary to ship yarn packages from one facility to another, sometimes at great distances such as from one country to another. The metal yarn tubes tend not to be returned to the point of origin in these instances, which substantially increases the yarn winder's cost of producing the yarn packages because the winder does not receive the benefit of recycling the already used yarn tubes.
The present disclosure relates to an adapter or support that enables a wound paperboard yarn core to be mounted on the spindle assembly.